10-Line Tuesday

the unplanned, the un-choreographed, the unintended,the rootless, the formless, the still-to-be-named

This time around, I'm giving the peas permission to die, knowing what I knowabout my spotty record. Last summer, they barely made it to the trellis,then withered on the vine after bearing a handful of pale, underwhelming progeny.It's not that I can't muster the effort or even the hope, which flowers perenniallydespite the evidence stacked against every good intention. But what I want now,also knowing what I know, is to square myself to the fickleness of survival,acknowledge success as more accidental than earned. When I bend to the earth,I want to do so on tenderer knees, without the ardor of expectation or reward.What I want is to praise the bending itself, the miracle of the body, any body,moving through its orbit, whether fallow or fruitful, not despite the odds, but because of them.